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Because all of these numbers represent a serious degradation of Barack Obama’s 2008 numbers among women. Exit polls indicated that Obama beat McCain 56/43 among women generally; 70/29 among unmarried women; and McCain only beat Obama 50/47 among married women. Hopefully this chart will help clarify matters:

Category BO MR Diff BO JM Diff Shift
Women 49 43 6 56 43 13 -7
Unmarried 62 34 28 70 29 41 -13
Married 42 49 -7 47 50 -3 -4
As you can see, Mitt Romney (MR) is currently doing much better in 2012 than John McCain (JM) did in 20o8 against Barack Obama (BO); or, more accurately, Barack Obama is doing much worse. I note this because it does not seem to be indicative of any sort of ‘unity bounce’ on Romney’s part; the Republican candidate seems to be more or less holding his own. But President Obama is in free fall. Now, of course it should be noted that this is one poll, and it may not be a representative poll, and that it is certainly not any sort of predictor of what the polls will look like in November. But there is still a technical term to describe a candidate who is suffering from significant erosion in his support from a key demographic, to the extent that Barack Obama is currently suffering among female voters.